It sounds as though you are presuming what the students' ideology is. None of your ideas sounds appealing to me nor would they to many of the young people I know. Helping people is not a universal ideal.
What needs to happen to get more interest in engineering is to remove ideology so the students can follow their own.
Also, reform primary education back to the basics (reading, writing, and math). Engineering would be less daunting if the students were better qualified coming out of high school.

Maybe the word should be altruistic - devoting oneself to a worthy cause. Maybe there should be an engineering peace corp. But I don't think you are going to get too many people to put up with the rigors of eng school for 4-5 years just to be a nice guy (or gal). Medical Drs go thru quite an lengthy ordeal until they can actually practice, but they know in the long run they will be well rewarded.

The IT world has customized easily these days as new public networking application and elements came out. This natural success should be expected, but many IT professionals missed the vessel, so to talk.
http://www.certificationkey.net/exams/HP2-E45.php

Charles, you are on to something here but I would say that what is too idealogical is this discussion. Playing the role as this forum's cynic can be tiring but it's appropraite here. All one needs to know about what is going on here is in this sentence:
"The program, sponsored by a grant from the U.S. National Science Foundation, is designed to prepare students to solve the Grand Challenges facing society."
I would encourage the forum to mull over that specific, telling statement and ask the appropriate questions thereof.

These are excellent points from one of the venerable amongst us, Torfa. I really appreciate the long-view perspective and agree that the lasting effect of WW2 on our economy can't be understated. And if I may add some levity - you might like this one which came from a good friend and fellow EE while summing up our Cold War success: "Our German scientists were better then their German scientists".

I think this may be a case of poor choice of a word: "ideological". It sounds like what they're talking about is showing people that engineering solves human problems, in other words they're explaining the definition of engineering. That has nothing to do with an ideology. Ideology deals with questions like to what extent property rights should be respected. Engineering is a different discipline from that.

I'm with Bert, Steve and JonD. For the past decade or so, I have been of the opinion that we are asking the wrong question of the wrong end of the food chain. The question isn't why young people aren't interested in science and engineering; clearly humans are interested in these things. The question should be why companies can't get people to have careers in these areas.
The answers are really quite simple: the pay is mediocre, the jobs are unstable, they don't get a lot of respect (at the companies or in general) and, increasingly, they don't get a chance to do anything except shuffle paper.
Seems like an awful lot of work for not a lot of reward.

Let me elaborate (my version) on needs driven engineering. I have always fully believed that what got us out of the great depression was the technology developed during WW2. We initially got in over our heads, but this nation got its act together. We met the need and kicked butt. After the war there was much new technology just waiting to be commercialized. The gov paid the vets to go to school, and made money available to entrepreneurs. The best and longest economic growth in this country's history took place for the next 20-30 years. The economists may still be scratching their heads about it. It is not in their texts. But the one big difference from today - we had it all to ourselves.

In conjunction with unveiling of EE Times’ Silicon 60 list, journalist & Silicon 60 researcher Peter Clarke hosts a conversation on startups in the electronics industry. One of Silicon Valley's great contributions to the world has been the demonstration of how the application of entrepreneurship and venture capital to electronics and semiconductor hardware can create wealth with developments in semiconductors, displays, design automation, MEMS and across the breadth of hardware developments. But in recent years concerns have been raised that traditional venture capital has turned its back on hardware-related startups in favor of software and Internet applications and services. Panelists from incubators join Peter Clarke in debate.